The Morbid History Podcast

They were approved, tested, wrapped, and put under Christmas trees. In this episode, we examine the dangerous, baffling, and occasionally radioactive history of American toys.  From a 1950’s science kit that came with actual uranium ore and a government seal of approval, to a beloved Cabbage Patch doll with a motorized jaw, no off switch, and no ability to distinguish between a plastic carrot and...

In 1861, Alabama seceded from the United States. Not everyone went along with it.   Deep in the hill country of northwest Alabama sat Winston County—a place of shallow soil, steep ridges, and small farmers who had no slaves, no plantations, and no interest in dying for a cause that wasn't theirs. When the state sent a delegate to the secession convention, Winston County sent a 21-year-old schoolte...

Progress has a price tag. And in Victorian America, it was usually fifty cents. In this episode, we pull back the ornate wallpaper of the nineteenth century and look at what was underneath. From the snake oil industry that dosed babies with morphine and sold radium water as a health tonic, to the Civil War physician who turned embalming into a national institution—and left one very specific instru...

She just wanted to run. That's all.   Twenty years old, bib number 261, tucked into the middle of the pack on a cold, rainy morning in Hopkinton, Massachusetts. She had trained over a thousand miles for this. She was ready.   The men in charge had other ideas. She finished anyway.   In this episode, we lace up and follow Kathrine Switzer through the 1967 Boston Marathon that changed women's sports...

Some crimes have consequences. Others have currency.   In this episode, we examine history's untouchables—the scientists, executives, kings, and killers whose genius, wealth, or strategic value placed them beyond the reach of ordinary justice. From the Japanese bioweapons unit whose commanders were handed immunity in exchange for their data (Unit 731), to the Nazi rocket engineer America gave a ne...

They called it the New Deal.   A promise. A lifeline. It was the most ambitious expansion of federal protection for working Americans in the nation's history, and was designed to pull a broken country back from the edge of collapse.   But buried in the fine print were some sneaky words that changed everything.   In 1935 and 1938, Southern Democrats struck a deal with the Roosevelt Administration....

Every utopia has a founder. Every founder has a vision.   And someone always pays for it.   In this episode, we examine the dark history of intentional communities — promised lands built on someone else's labor, someone else's body, or someone else's silence. From a New York commune that ran America's first eugenics program and pivoted to silverware, to a 64,000-acre Oregon ranch whose vision of e...

He was just going to the corner store.   In 1981, Michael Donald never made it home.   Two members of the Ku Klux Klan had been driving the streets of Mobile, Alabama with a gun and a rope — looking for any Black man they could find.   But this isn't just the story of a murder. It's the story of what his mother did next.   In this episode, we follow Beulah Mae Donald — a single mother from a Mobil...

Some stories are too strange for fiction. Others are just too inconvenient for runtime.   In this episode, we go behind the screen — examining the true events Hollywood borrowed, polished, and quietly edited before selling them back to us. From Hugh Glass, mauled by a grizzly and left for dead in the Dakota wilderness, to twenty-one men adrift in the Pacific after a sperm whale sank their ship — a...

They were small enough to fit. That’s why they chose them.   In 18th- and 19th-century England, thousands of young boys were forced to climb inside narrow chimneys to scrape away soot. They were underfed to keep them small. Burned if they hesitated. Suffocated if they slipped.   But the worst horror didn’t come in childhood.   Years later, many of these former climbing boys developed a brutal and...

Some crimes are chaotic. Others are calculated.   In this episode, we examine history’s most notorious heists—beginning with the 1990 robbery at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, where thieves walked out with priceless masterpieces that have never been recovered. From there, we trace legendary robberies across trains, sewers, skies, and vaults—culminating in the audacious Antwerp Diamond Heist,...

For centuries, mental illness wasn’t treated… it was controlled.   In this episode, we step inside the brutal history of insane asylums and early psychiatric “care,” beginning with Bethlem Royal Hospital , where madness became public spectacle.   From there, we trace the rise of lobotomies in the United States and examine the therapies that promised healing while delivering silence: insulin comas,...

He didn’t die on the Senate floor. But a part of him never left it.   In this episode, we examine the life and legacy of Charles Sumner—an abolitionist senator who stood against slavery, demanded Black equality, and bled in the halls of Congress after a brutal caning by Representative Preston Brooks in 1856.   The attack left him with brain trauma and what we now call PTSD. But it didn’t end his m...

Ghost stories used to be whispered around campfires. Now they’re printed on mugs.   In this episode, we explore how ghost lore in America went from local legends to full-fledged tourism industry... complete with haunted hotels, cemetery tours, and “spirit weekend packages.” From Victorian mourning rituals to Stephen King’s night at the Stanley Hotel, from Salem to Savannah, we follow the ghostly t...

Hollywood loves a good curse. But what if the real horror isn’t supernatural at all?   In this episode of Morbid History, we step behind the camera to examine the films said to be “cursed”—from The Twilight Zone: The Movie, where a fatal on-set disaster changed Hollywood forever, to The Omen, a production haunted by a trail of eerie coincidences and tragedy.   Along the way, we explore the chaos s...

It started with a flooded house and a dolphin named Peter. It ended in LSD, obsession, and death.   In the 1960s, a young woman named Margaret Howe Lovatt moved into a house filled with water to teach a dolphin how to speak. Backed by NASA and fueled by fringe science, the experiment soon spiraled into something far more disturbing.   LSD got involved, and what followed was a bizarre and tragic ch...

The sea is beautiful... until it isn’t.   In this episode, we plunge into the darkest waters of maritime history: the doomed Franklin Expedition, frozen in the Arctic and driven to madness and cannibalism, and the Batavia, where a shipwreck unraveled into a brutal cult of murder and terror on a barren island.   Along the way, we examine ghost ships drifting without crews, lighthouse keepers who va...

She didn’t die because of the cold. She died because no one fixed the door.   In 2023, 63-year-old Nguyet Le was found dead inside the walk-in freezer of an Arby’s restaurant in Louisiana.   In this episode, we examine a horrifying case of corporate neglect, corner-cutting, and quiet cruelty... and how it led to one of the most preventable workplace deaths in recent memory.   Horror doesn’t always...

Every October, the air grows colder, the nights stretch longer, and the boundary between the living and the dead begins to fade.   In this Halloween special, we'll trace the haunting origins of the holiday. From the fires of ancient Samhain and the prayers of All Hallows’ Eve, to poisoned candy panics, witch trials, and the worldwide traditions that still honor the dead today.   It’s a story of ma...

In 1857, over 120 emigrants were slaughtered in the Utah desert under a white flag of peace. The killers? Mormon militia. The blame? Pinned on Native tribes.   In this episode, we uncover the dark and deliberate horror of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. It was an ambush cloaked in religious fear and racial scapegoating. We explore how a brutal execution of men, women, and children was carefully sta...

Samurai dramas paint feudal Japan in gleaming armor and noble duels. But the truth was far darker.   In this episode, we descend into the Sengoku era, which was a century of civil war, betrayal, and blood. From Oda Nobunaga, the self-styled “Demon King of the Sixth Heaven” who burned monks alive on a mountain, to Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the peasant who rose to power only to fall to ambition, to Tokuga...

In 1955, Ruth Ellis shot her lover in broad daylight. Three months later, she became the last woman in Britain to be executed.   But behind the headlines was a woman already broken.   In this episode, we uncover the tragic life of Ruth Ellis (a nightclub hostess turned convicted murderer) whose story was shaped as much by violence and betrayal as by the bullet she fired. From glamour to scandal, f...

Some crimes end in a trial. Others end in silence.   In this episode, we descend into the eerie world of the unexplained. A place where locked rooms hide secrets, bodies are found with coded notes, and the truth remains just out of reach.   From the brutal and baffling death of Artemus Ogletree in a Kansas City hotel… to two Brazilian men found on a hillside wearing lead masks and waiting for a si...

She was everywhere. But no one knew her name.   Audrey Munson was the most visible woman in America. She was immortalized in bronze, marble, and stone. Her face still crowns city halls, fountains, and public parks across the country.   But behind the statues was a woman who fell from fame into scandal… and then into silence.   In this episode, we trace the haunting rise and ruin of America’s first...

Faith can inspire. Faith can heal. But blind faith can kill.   In this chilling episode, Thomas Gloom descends into the world of religious cults. A place where devotion turns deadly and salvation comes with a price.   Whether it's the eerie calm of Heaven’s Gate, the poisoned jungle of Jonestown, or the ritual fires of the Order of the Solar Temple, this episode explores the dark places where beli...